Southeast High School art teacher Windy Lampson has been selected as the Alamance-Burlington school sys-tem’s 2025 Teacher of the Year.
A native of Goldsboro and an East Carolina University alumnus, Lampson is in her 18th year of teaching and 16th year of teaching for ABSS. She previously taught art at Graham High School – where her colleagues selected her as the high school’s teacher of the year in 2016 and 2021, when she was also a finalist for the ABSS teacher of the year – for 14 years. Lampson transferred to Southeast High School, following completion of the county’s newest high school in 2023.
Lampson never really considered a career in teaching – it was always “a second option,
she says, but is quick to add she wouldn’t change a thing.
In an interview with The Alamance News Wednesday afternoon, Lampson traced her interest in art to her childhood in Goldsboro.
“As a kid I was kind of into everything,” Lampson recalls. “I drew a lot, and that kind of helped me focus in class. If I was doodling on the side, it helped my brain focus a little better, but I didn’t know what I wanted to do at all.” As a teen, she wound up winning what would become the first of several art exhibitions, before a teacher encouraged her to study art at ECU, where the fine arts program has consistently placed high among public universities in U.S. News & World Report’s annual rankings.
“Creating art is about a series of choices and being aware of those choices, to make sure they’re purposeful, because changing just one of those choices might make someone take notice of what you’re trying to say.”
– ABSS 2025 teacher of the year Windy Lampson
Along the way, her mother introduced her to major movements in visual art, such as impressionism, Lampson says. From there she developed a love for the Dutch master, Johannes Vermeer, best known for his domestic interiors, such as Girl with a Pearl Earring, to contemporary American painters such as Kehinde Wiley. “I love Vermeer for composition; I love the impressionists for color; I love Kehinde Wiley, his portraits, detail are incredible – his message is relatable to students.”
After earning dual degrees fine arts in Studio Art and Art Education, followed by a master’s of fine arts in painting from ECU, Lampson initially began teaching art at an elementary school in Florida, while her husband, Jeff Lampson, was working toward his degree in recording arts at Full Sail University.
“I tried elementary art for two years – I really didn’t know how to be an artist,” Lampson says of her initial foray into the teaching profession. “Elementary was harder for me; as [an elementary art] teacher, you only get to see kids once a week, so it’s hard to build relationships.”
For Lampson, art is all about making connections with the surrounding world.
[Story continues below a sampling of Lampson’s own art work.]
Some of Windy Lampson’s own art work
“Generally, I think it helps us process the world, think through things,” Lampson says.
As a high school teacher, Lampson says she strives to help her students understand “how much we do on default,” to examine the choices that we all make unconsciously. “Creating art is about a series of choices and being aware of those choices, to make sure they’re purposeful, because changing just one of those choices might make someone take notice of what you’re trying to say,” Lampson explains.
After teaching elementary school art in Florida, and briefly in Richmond, Virginia, Lampson left the profession to work full-time as an artist, specializing in oil portraits, still life, landscapes, and abstract, as well as other media. “I feel like I’m most successful with oil, but I’m trying to do more mixed media, make that accessible to my students who have interest in more things, but oil is definitely what I feel most comfortable with,” she tells the newspaper.
Second option becomes the better one
Lampson found success while working solely as an artist: she was commissioned to do 36 drawings for a pediatrics office in Alabama and paint a portrait for Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro. She also participated in numerous juried solo art exhibitions between 2001 and 2010, winning first place prizes and best in show at four juried arts competitions in Alamance, Wayne, and Caswell counties, as well as in Danville, Virginia, between 2007 and 2011, according to her artist website.
But the housing bust of 2007 and the subsequent worldwide economic downturn meant most people stopped spending money on art, prompting Lampson to rethink teaching. She and her husband returned to North Carolina, when he accepted a job at Elon University, where he is currently employed as an event support specialist.
“As a professional artist, it’s hard to be alone all day. After the housing market crashed, I got a job at Graham [High School]. It took me a little while to figure out how to handle high schoolers, but after two or three years, I started to enjoy it.”
Lampson has taught high school classes in Beginning, Intermediate, Proficient, Advanced, and Advanced Placement (AP) art, as well as drawing and 2D Design classes, for the past 16 years.
At Southeast, she has approximately 68 students in three class periods. In “first block,” the first 90-minute period of the day, she has 28 students for four classes in the same classroom: Intermediate, Proficient, Advanced, and AP. “With art, because we have so many different specialized courses, we have to have them all in the classroom, four classes within the same period,” Lampson elaborates.
“With art, a lot of [students] come in thinking they’re going to color,” Lampson says. “[Then you] see them as they start to understand how valuable art is…people are good, not because they’re just naturally talented, [but because] they’re paying attention to what they’re doing. They learn how to correct things on the fly; they learn problem-solving through that, rather than just giving up.”
Her second and fourth block classes are both beginning art, with about 30 students in each class, who start off with pencil drawing and progress as they learn how to master the process and develop their own techniques. “I need them to understand how to see, how to build their own steps – that’s a lot of what I do,” says Lampson. “We try to stay with pencil because teaching them how to paint, blend colors is overwhelming. They work their way through other mediums; right now, they’re working with acrylics.”
By comparison, Lampson’s more advanced art students focus on turning abstract concepts into visual works of art. “For my AP students, they’re choosing their own media and moving beyond choosing a media because they can make it look good. They choose an inquiry and build their artwork based on [a question]. For example, I have an AP art student right now, working on how [to] portray the feeling of being used.” That student began with the concept of a trophy wife, which started as a drawing of a woman in a bridal gown and ultimately morphed into a sculpture, Lampson says, adding, “They’re incredible; I’d never been able to make a work like that when I was their age.”
Lampson’s students regularly compete in juried competitions sponsored by area organizations such as Alamance Arts. “Then, we have one at our school every year,” she says.
Southeast High School will hold a juried exhibition for students later this month, on May 22, from 5:00 p.m. until 6:30 p.m., which Lampson points out is open to the public. “The high school arts teachers at Williams and Graham have volunteered to come and jury the show for me,” she says.
In between teaching, she juggles her roles as a wife and mother to sons Noah and Miles (both ABSS students), while continuing to hone her skills, at both the easel and inside the classroom.
Alamance Amplified
“There is a passion of mine, outside of teaching,” says Lampson. She and Hillcrest Elementary School math teacher Ashley West, who was the ABSS teacher of the year in 2023, serve as co-chairs for a teacher-led organization, Amplified Alamance, that meets monthly to brainstorm about ways to improve public education in Alamance County.
“Education has changed so much. There are so many ways kids can get content now. Most of us, when we grew up, it was lectures, note-taking, and taking a test. I want people to value what good teachers do; how well they know their content; and how you can deliver it in multiple ways in the same classroom, with all of the other stuff we’ve got going on.”
– Windy Lampson, ABSS 2025 teacher of the year
The group was originally established as a teacher leadership advisory council by Kelly Poquette, then a math teacher at E.M. Yoder Elementary School after she was selected as the ABSS teacher of the year in 2020. (Poquette is now an assistant professor of music at Greensboro College.)
“At the time, I was teacher of the year at Graham,” Lampson recalls. “We met on Zoom and discussed ways to better the profession, to better ABSS in general.”
Alamance Amplified is now some 300 members strong and entirely run by teachers. “It includes any teacher in ABSS,” Lampson says. “There are no dues; it’s not a union. We focus on doing whatever we can to better ABSS and the mindset in general.
“Education has changed so much,” Lampson concedes. “There are so many ways kids can get content now. Most of us, when we grew up, it was lectures, note-taking, and taking a test. I want people to value what good teachers do; how well they know their content; and how you can deliver it in multiple ways in the same classroom, with all of the other stuff we’ve got going on.”
There is no end goal, says Lampson, because once you think you’ve reached your goals as a teacher, it’s time to set the bar higher still. “We want the best system of public education in our county; for kids to feel like it’s the best, to take pride in it; parents, to get excited; teachers, to enjoy working here – and figure out how it can be better.”
Lampson’s selection as the 2025 teacher of the year was announced during the annual excellence in education awards event at First Presbyterian Church in Burlington on Tuesday evening, coinciding with National Teacher Appreciation Day.
By Wednesday afternoon, Lampson was still trying to process having been chosen for the honor.
“[There’s] this whole overwhelming sense of how much there is to do – things that could be better,” she tells the newspaper. “I have definitely not arrived.”
As the 2025 ABSS Teacher of the Year, Lampson will receive: a trip sponsored by Go Global NC, a nonprofit in Wake Forest that provides study abroad and other professional development for educators; a $2,000 check, plus a $1,000 check for Southeast High School; funding to attend a national conference of her choice; funding for a classroom makeover, in addition to other prizes donated by nearly two dozen area businesses, nonprofits, and individuals.
Lampson will go on to compete later this year for the Piedmont-Triad region teacher of the year and the N.C. teacher of the year in the spring of 2026.
She resides in Burlington with her husband and two children.
